Burnt Sienna
by harassed
Summary: [AU, Sorato] They say you could hear her heart break.
1. Chapter 1

I own nothing.

**Burnt Sienna: One**

He ran into her on the street, and the first thing he noticed about her was that she smelled like rain and possibly crushed rose petals, which was what he remembered his mother to smell like. He'd been endlessly jealous of Takeru during the first three months of the divorce, because Takeru got to live with that comforting, familiar smell, while he only had his father, who didn't smell like anything, and a house piled with unpacked cardboard boxes.

He should have been paying attention to where he was going, but he had just gotten out of a meeting with his manager, which had consisted of her yelling at him for getting headlines for another scandal and him protesting that he didn't know that the girl was a prostitute, and her throwing a pencil at him. He had the bruise at his temple to show for it, and she'd dismissed him a few minutes later, rubbing the bridge of her nose and muttering about insufferable rock stars and ignorance.

He'd been engrossed in zipping up his jacket and getting his sunglasses on, and he hadn't noticed that he was walking in the wrong direction. Wrong direction meant that he was walking against the crowd, to the left of the sidewalk, instead of walking on the right like everyone else going in his direction was doing. Tokyo Times Square was crowded at any time of the day, but there was always a certain order to the commotion. People rarely bumped into each other, almost never made eye contact, and walked with a purpose that covered up the fact that they really didn't have anywhere to go.

He'd been obliviously brushing past people for about five minutes, and he figured his shoulders and upper arms were rather desensitized from the sudden barrage of impersonal contact, so he hadn't noticed when a girl's shoulder collided with his, and the girl fell to the pavement in a mess of coffee, papers, and long strings of swears.

"_Kuso-kuso-kuso-kuso_," the girl muttered steadily, adjusting the white newsboy cap perched on her head, and Yamato scrambled to help her, reaching for a leather portfolio that had fallen open and grabbing the papers and sketches scattered on the sidewalk around them. He silently thanked any and all higher powers that people in Tokyo were neat-freaks, because the snow-white papers were still pristine.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, stacking the papers neatly and tucking them into the folder. His eyes downcast (though she couldn't see them, because of the sunglasses), he held out the portfolio, and a few seconds later, the weight lifted from his hands.

"_Aigoo_, watch where you're going, _baka_," she said, and Yamato could see her glaring at him, faintly, through the dark lenses of her black, oversized sunglasses.

She dusted the front of her shirt off hurriedly and angling her head to check her pants and shoes. As she did, Yamato checked her out.

She was pretty, despite her obvious temper. She was young, probably his age or younger, petite and slender in denim flares, stiletto boots, and a white shirt with a swirling vintage looking black design creeping from her left shoulder to her right hip. Her features were extremely attractive and slightly tanned, set in an oval-shaped face. Yamato thought that she looked one hundred percent Japanese, even though her eyes were obscured and her hair was an odd auburn color, falling to the middle of her back in thick, straight, feathery layers.

"Stop staring at me," she snapped, and he started.

"Sorry." He bowed, and she sniffed, picking her tattered messenger bag off the ground and pushing the portfolio in roughly.

"So rude," she continued muttering, and Yamato wondered if maybe she thought that he couldn't hear her. "Making me spill my coffee and my papers, and still staring at me. I'm sick of people looking at me, it's not as if I'm an alien, ne…"

"I'm sorry," he muttered, bowing again, and she looked at the back of his neck.

"Ne…blond hair?"

He unfolded and put his hands in his pockets, immediately uncomfortable.

"Never mind, sorry," and for the first time, the redhead seemed as uncomfortable as him. He heard her exhale hugely, and then say, "I'm sorry that I wasn't looking where I was going either, and I'm sorry that I yelled at you when this incident was half my fault."

"S'all right," Yamato muttered.

"All right." There was a click of heel against pavement, and she stepped back once, hesitantly. "Thank you for helping me up and such." There was another click, then another, and she walked off hurriedly, not looking back.

**X**

"Did I tell you?" Yagami Taichi queried lazily, a bottle of beer in his hand and a small grin on his face.

Yamato was silent as Taichi's girlfriend, Tachikawa Mimi, turned away from the stove and looked at her half-drunk boyfriend with mild curiosity on her pretty face.

"What, Taichi?"

"Sora is moving back."

Yamato's curiosity peaked when Mimi dropped her spatula and gasped, her mouth forming a perfect 'o' of surprise.

"Are you serious?"

Taichi leaned back in his chair, tipping on its back legs, and pushed his fingers through his impossibly bushy russet brown hair. "She sent me an email last night."

The small smile on Mimi's face split into a huge, genuine grin, and the brunette shrieked happily and clapped her hands.

"Did she say whether she was moving back to…?"

"Shibuya," Taichi confirmed. "But she was considering Aoyama."

"She would," Mimi said, rolling her eyes and turning back to the stove, stirring the contents of a pot with a different spatula.

"Who's Sora?" Yamato asked.

"Takenouchi Sora," Taichi sighed, clasping his hand together behind his head.

"Taichi's first love," Mimi joked, and Taichi's darkly tanned skin tinged pink. Yamato laughed, and then his jaw dropped.

"Takenouchi Sora—the fashion designer?"

"Who'd have thought?" Mimi mused, as Taichi drank determinedly from his bottle of beer, trying desperately to keep his blush under control.

"Why?" Yamato asked. He'd read one of her interviews in a magazine a few weeks ago, and she had seemed cool, composed, and a bit distant.

"She had no fashion sense whatsoever when we were kids," Mimi laughed, though not cruelly. "She wore the school uniform like the school said, with knee socks and penny loafers and that stupid tie."

Yamato arched an eyebrow when she looked over her shoulder at him, and she rolled her doe-brown eyes.

"She and Taichi and I were friends in junior high," she clarified, lifting a spoon to her mouth and tasting the broth. "She was a complete tomboy, only hung out with her soccer team friends, some of her school friends, and me. I was the only girl of that whole bunch." Mimi turned the stove off, untied her apron strings, and walked to the sink, collecting plates and chopsticks from the dish rack.

"She got accepted to some ritzy art school in Korea and moved before our second year of high school," the brunette continued calmly, kicking the leg of Taichi's chair, and he scrambled to get drinks and bowls for everyone.

"She left right before I moved here," Yamato said, and Taichi shrugged in a you-just-missed-her sort of way. "I thought you said…" Yamato took the plates from her and began to set the table.

"Ne, Yamato. Everyone grows out of his or her twelve-year-old self. Besides, her mom owned a chain of flower shops in Odaiba; it wasn't as if Sora didn't have any exposure to the arts, or girly stuff. She helped her mom there every other day after school."

"Old women loved her," Taichi said, smirking. He set water down in front of each of the place settings, and Mimi bumped her hip gently against his, frowning.

"Let's eat, hmm?" Mimi set small bowls mounded with food and rice down on the table and slid into her chair. Taichi clicked his chopsticks together in response.

**X**

Yamato wished he could say he was one of those enormously famous rock stars with millions of screaming fans—on par with L'ArcenCiel or Gackt or even Hamasaki Ayumi—and he got drunk every night and actually went to the fabulous nightclubs and bars of Shibuya, but that was as far from the truth as he could get. His band was relatively popular, but still on the rise. He got drunk in the privacy of his too-big apartment, smoked whenever, and avoided fans like they were the plague.

His publicist told him that there was no way his band would ever get famous if he continued with his antisocial, misanthropic behavior (because those were the words she had used), and all the time and money that had been put into the band would be for nothing.

Yamato was only twenty-four, but his manager told him he acted like an old man. He liked quiet, sitting with his guitar, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette and writing lyrics, and being on stage, because the bright lights blinded him. He didn't like signing autographs, doing promotional interviews, or even meeting with directors for PVs and TV shows. Aside from his scandals, Ishida Yamato was almost…boring. And his scandals weren't really all that interesting, in his opinion.

He thought of the girl that smelled like rain and crushed rose petals, the one he'd run into on the street. She'd been quirky, and there had been something about her that seemed _fun_. She'd cursed at him, but it hadn't been malignantly. Her lips had curved up at the corners before she snapped at him for staring at her, and he could have sworn that he heard her laugh as she was walking off.

She reminded him of his mother more than anything, mostly because of the way she smelled, partly because of the way she had reacted when he knocked her down. Yamato had never known his mother to yell, in any situation. When nine-year-old Yamato had brought a feverish Takeru home at one in the morning, she had bundled Takeru in a bunch of blankets, given them both soup to eat, and called the doctor. His father had been another story all together, though he hadn't been there when Yamato came home (he'd been working).

Takeru had told him about another time, when he'd brought Hikari back to the apartment at midnight, and Natsuko had found asleep on the couch the next morning. She'd sent Hikari home, told Takeru to fix his own breakfast, and she'd walked out of the apartment without a coat.

Yamato told him that he had been lucky, and Takeru had laughed it off.

"She never yelled, Yamato, and you know that."

Takaishi Natsuko died when Yamato was twenty-one, of breast cancer and a cold. Takeru had cried straight through the funeral rites and the cremation, and Hikari had done her best to comfort him, though Yamato knew that whispering meaningless nothings into the ear of a boy who had always been extremely sensitive was useless and counter-productive. Regardless, it seemed to help his little brother. Yamato, on the other hand, hadn't shed a tear, and he knew that his grandmother and aunt and uncle had looked at him more-than-critically for this lapse of sensitivity.

She was a mother that he truly never knew, but he didn't think that he would cry at his father's funeral, either. They had never been close, and their relationship extended to casual hellos when Yamato was leaving the bathroom and his father was entering, or Yamato cooking dinner and keeping a portion aside for his father when he came home (late) from work.

Yamato's emotional investments extended to Taichi, Mimi, and Sakura, a girlfriend who had comforted him one night when his when he cried for reasons he didn't remember. She had been impossibly elegant, well mannered, and sweet. He had broken up with her the next day. His paternal grandmother, who he remembered as soft, wonderful, and everything a grandmother should be, had passed away when he was six or seven. He had never been close with any of his other family members.

In short, Ishida Yamato had never had real human contact.

Deep down inside of him, he hoped that someone would change that.

**X**

For a world famous fashion designer, she sure didn't look it.

She stepped into the living room in front of Taichi, inclining her head slightly in Mimi's direction and bowing a little lower for Yamato.

"Takenouchi Sora," she said sweetly, turning her head to the side and looking at him through coppery-brown eyes. She held her hand out, and he stood up to shake it, his other hand pushed into the front pocket of his jeans.

"Ishida Yamato," he replied.

"You're in a band," she said, and a half-smile played at the corners of her lips. "Bible Kiss Bible. I've listened to your stuff a couple of times. It's good. You're right on the edge of popularity, aren't you?"

He smiled uncomfortably. "Yes."

"_Aigoo_, I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I? Sorry." She bowed briefly and flopped into the armchair behind her, crossing her legs easily and shrugging out of her peacoat as she stuck her tongue out at Taichi, who was yelping about 'his armchair'.

She was pretty in a way that was impossibly alive. She also didn't carry herself in the way he would expect a world famous fashion designer to.

It was the way she was dressed, for one. She was wearing a thick, oversized cream-colored sweater, denim flares with tattered, fraying hems and a hole exposing her right knee, and Yamato could see a pair of black Converse high-tops toppled against each other by the front door. Her eyes were almond-shaped, long and spidery-lashed, and disconcertingly deep. She also looked vaguely familiar.

"Are your eyes really blue?" she asked as she rummaged through her purse.

Yamato coughed. "Yes."

She looked vaguely interested as she pushed her thick hair behind her slim shoulders, and his eyes flickered over the tousled, messy reddish-brown locks as he tried to come up with a color to describe them exactly.

"Ne, Ishida-san?"

He looked at her, making eye contact uncertainly. She half-smiled as she reached behind herself and gathered her hair into a dense pile at the nape of her neck, securing it with a rubber band. "This is the part where you ask a question," she said. She put her bag on the floor, resting it against the side of the armchair, and pulled her legs up so she could rest her chin on her knees.

"Why'd you move back?" he asked.

Something flickered in her eyes, and suddenly they were cool, guarded, darker.

"I've got to get back to my homeland at one point or another," she said, her lips quirking once again before she stood up, pausing awkwardly. "I'm going to go and help Mimi in the kitchen."

And she walked off, the fabric of her sweater shifting loosely over her slight sway of her hips.

"You blew it, man," Taichi said, sitting down and handing him a can of beer.

"How?" Yamato pushed the tab down and winced as the can hissed wetly.

"Just the way she acted. She walked away after two sentences with you; that means she was bored. And she hates helping people in the kitchen."

"Stop talking about me, Taichi!" A yell sounded from the kitchen, and Taichi grimaced.

"You blew it, too, didn't you?" Yamato asked, setting the can down on the table with a knowing smirk.

"We've got too much history," Taichi said confidently. "She'd never do anything to me."

He was mildly shocked when a wooden spoon made contact with the back of his head.

"Sorry, Mimi," Sora called from the kitchen. "I guess I still have lotion on my hands. Why don't you let me chop the vegetables?"

"History, hmm?" Yamato raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of beer, as Taichi paled significantly and Mimi tried and failed to stifle her giggles.

_Burnt sienna_, Yamato thought, as Sora poked her head out of the kitchen, a huge, genuine grin on her face and hair scattered all over her shoulders and eyes.

The color of her hair was burnt sienna.

**A/N: Eh, eh? How is it? **

**Aha, you all (all you _fantastic_ people) are probably all like, "What the fuck, she isn't finished with her one story and she hasn't updated in a while, and she promised a one-shot in January that never happened, and now she's posting a whole new multi-chapter fic." Or, I could just be acting incredibly self-important. ;)**

**Yes, yes I am. Because I've been watching so many freaking Korean dramas that rabid plot bunnies have been running around in my head, biting and infecting each other and creating even more rabid baby plot bunnies. It's ridiculous. The Korean wave has hit me _hard_. **

**Plus, I've got a writer's block for _Symphony of Sound_ liekwhoa. That story is going to hell in a hand basket. I just don't know. **

**So bear with the undeniable AU-ish-ness of this fic, because it gets better, I swear. I've got solid ideas (and unlimited resources) for this fic. I kind of know where it's going. Please don't hate me. **

**Read and review, ne? Tell me what you think! 8D**


	2. Chapter 2

I own nothing.

**Burnt Sienna: Two**

"You smoke," an accusing voice stated, floating somewhere above her head, and Sora looked up and smiled guiltily at Ishida Yamato as he gazed down at her passively.

"I do," she said, grinding what was left of her cigarette against the park bench beneath her.

"You said back there that you didn't want me to walk you home because I smoke." He jerked his head to the right up, in the general direction of Taichi and Mimi's apartment. She smiled sheepishly and he sat down beside her without waiting for an invitation, but Sora found that she didn't mind. He was nice to look at, with his messy, impossibly gold-blond hair and his brooding ocean-eyes and his fair, high-cheekboned face.

"I don't really know you," Sora offered weakly, trying as inconspicuously as possible to study him. The sun was setting in the pale pinkish sky behind him, casting him in muted shadow and making him a half-silhouette with almost-translucent hair.

Sora hated when things were on the verge of being.

"You didn't say anything when I sat down," he replied, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his thighs, contemplating the grass.

Sora also hated that he was turning out of be more of a pragmatist than she had first figured him to be.

He turned his head and looked at her, and in the ever-waning light she could see that his eyes were perfectly true-blue-cerulean flecked with sapphire and navy and cobalt and playing an anthem for Prussia. His hair brushed his collar in the back, shortening in shaggy layers and falling over his forehead and into his eyes.

"You lived in Seoul when you were in Korea, ne?" he asked.

She nodded.

"And you lived in Odaiba before that, and now you live in Shibuya."

She nodded again, hating him for stating the obvious and hating herself for not knowing where the conversation was going.

"So in your relatively short lifetime, you've lived in two huge cities."

She nodded redundantly.

"And you're afraid of walking home with someone you don't know?" He raised a gilded eyebrow. "Did you ever go out with your friends in high school?"

"I didn't get piss drunk," Sora replied, fisting the loose denim of her jeans between her fingers and looking at the outline of her knees. They were looking too bony again.

"Never?"

Sora squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember. "Mmm…not that I recall." And she tried to recall why she was sitting here on a park bench talking to an almost-rock star that she'd met once and avoided twice.

"You might have been too wasted to remember," he pointed out, shrugging.

Sora lifted and dropped her shoulders in an exaggeratedly slow motion. "Maybe my boyfriend carried me home."

"You always have a strong man around to help you?" He looked at her, and Sora found herself hating his passive look and neutral expression even more than his endless list of almosts.

"Who here?" she asked.

"Taichi," he replied immediately. "Your nameless boyfriend in Seoul."

"My father left when I was three," Sora heard herself say, not understanding why this was coming out of her mouth. "And my boyfriend's name was Lee Shin."

She stood, slung her messenger bag over her shoulder, and walked off, ignoring Yamato's calls as she squinted against the sun.

**X**

Lee Shin had been everything that any girl would have wanted in a boyfriend, and Sora was no exception to this.

She'd shown up at the academy as a transfer student with ridiculous, Japanese-accented Korean that she'd taught herself in less than two months, feeling self-conscious in the school-regulation skirt (which was about the length of her tennis skirt and therefore too short), and he'd stared at her when she walked through the front doors.

He'd been every girl's dream boyfriend in that he was tall, with moderately broad shoulder and slim hips, thick, shaggy black hair that fell into sleepy dark brown eyes that were set in an impossibly handsome face. His smile was ready and sweet and made girls melt; all Sora saw was a mountain of clichés shaped into an undeniably hot piece of ass.

He also attended classes like he was supposed to, turned his homework in on time, and played basketball with his friends before school. He was studying to become director, while Sora was studying design.

The first time he spoke to her was in art history, the only class that they shared during her first year there. Twice a week, early in the morning, one hundred students would sit in the academy's auditorium and sleep through grainy black-and-white films and an ancient professor's wheezy, rambling lectures. Sora had tried paying attention once or twice, but the narrator's voice coupled with the dim light from the image projected on the screen and the dark room was a ready-made tranquilizer, and she often found her eyelids drooping heavily.

He'd passed her a note three classes into the school year, and had smiled a genuine smile when she'd picked it up and looked at him questioningly. He'd gestured for her to open it, and she had, and on the neatly folded paper was written, in equally neat Hangul, a simple 'hi, I'm bored', and she'd laughed out loud.

They passed notes through the film, and after class ended, he was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, waiting for her. He walked her to all her classes that day (she still didn't know how he'd known when and where to pick her up), flirted with her, teased her non-stop about her less-than-impressive Hangul, and marveled at her ability to speak Korean even semi-fluently.

He offered to walk her home after school, and she agreed, mostly because he'd turned out to be completely contrary to the mountain of clichés that she'd pegged him as, and partly because she wasn't sure if she knew how to get back to her apartment at that point.

He walked her up to her door, she invited him in, and somewhere along the way he managed to get his hands up her shirt and his lips and teeth on her neck, and after half an hour of his teasing and nipping and effectively reducing her to a needy, naked mess underneath him, she lost her virginity to him on her childhood bed. It was inelegant and unromantic, but Sora found that she didn't care. Even though, after the deed was done, the extent of his displaying affection was to rest his forehead against hers while trying to catch his breath before he pulled his clothes on left, he showed up at her door the next morning, introduced himself very formally and properly to her mother, and walked her to school.

She found it paradoxical that though she had lost her virginity to him on the first day that she met him, he didn't kiss her again until their first real date. For his dangerous smiles and reputation as an egotistical player, Shin turned out to far more committed and sensitive than any of her previous boyfriends. He maintained as much physical contact as was possible, left his sweatshirts at her place so that she could wear them whenever she wanted, and seemed to instinctively know when she wanted chocolate. He could hold a decent conversation with her mother, and even though he couldn't cook, he always did the dishes when they ate dinner together.

Sora sighed, shook her head, and slapped herself lightly on the cheek a couple of times before walking to the sink and placing her plate on the stack of dirty dishes. She opened her cabinets to check, exhaled shortly when she found that they were empty, and turned the faucet on, hitching her sleeves up and pushing her hair behind her shoulders.

It was ridiculous to linger on aspects of a relationship that was, as far as it was concerned from his side, over. It had been sweet while it lasted, but as her mother had said, she was still young, and she still had her whole life to live on love.

The water scalded her hands and Sora flinched, twitching the faucet handle to the right and watching detachedly as ice-cold water gushed over her lobster-red skin. She squeezed soap onto a sponge and attacked the dishes, scraping dried food and stubborn rice from bowls and wiping drink stains from cups. She rinsed, dried, and stacked the dishes into the drying rack almost mechanically.

And as she looked at the draining sink and the remnants of suds clinging to the stainless steel, she wasn't surprised when her vision blurred, salty tears skated down her cheeks and into her mouth, and she sank to the floor, her hands fisted over the hems over her sleeves and her arms crossed over her stomach as she cried.

**X**

"You know, for a designer that's about to be world-famous, you sure don't dress like it."

Sora rolled her eyes and Mimi dropped into the seat across from her and signaled the waiter for water.

"You're late."

"Fashionably," Mimi said, preening and fluffing her hair. "Oh, come on, Sora, have a sense of humor. It's good for you."

"So I've heard," Sora replied dryly, and laughed when Mimi glared at her. "I'm kidding."

Mimi looked every bit of the model that she was, and Sora was surprised that her friend wasn't being mobbed as she walked down the street. Then again, being a model wasn't as high profile as being a rock star, and so Sora was thankful that she'd chosen the least conspicuous of the high-profile professions and decided to become a designer. Most people thought she looked too young to be famous, anyhow, and she didn't give enough interviews to be well known public figure. She wanted her clothing to speak for itself, and her publicist once told her that she was an optimistic idiot.

Sora slid her menu down into her lap. "What's good here?"

Mimi opened her menu and scanned the choices. "I forget every time I come here."

"Flake."

"Or perfectly like me," Mimi replied. "I hope I haven't changed that much."

"You've been in the same environment your whole life," Sora replied, opening her menu and resting it on her lap, propping it against the table.

"And I'm sorry that life has been so cruel to you, but you're being bitchy." Mimi played with her engagement ring and eyed Sora cautiously.

"I'm in a bad mood," Sora muttered, and she sank down in her seat and pushed her baseball hat down over her eyes.

"What are best friends for?" Mimi nudged Sora's calf with the toe of her boot. "You can tell me."

Sora sighed heavily. "I know."

Mimi had been nagging her for a session of good, old-fashioned girl talk since Sora had moved back, and Sora knew that she wasn't ready for it.

"Sora, come on. We'll go to that coffee shop that you liked before you moved…"

"Is it still open?" Sora asked distractedly. She toyed with the hem of her sweatshirt and pushed the bill of her hat up.

"Why would it close?" Mimi leaned forward. "We can still take the subway from here to Odaiba and be back before the sun sets."

Sora looked up and met Mimi's eyes. "Okay."

**X**

Mimi gabbed with wild, cheerful abandon all through the subway ride to Odaiba and the walk to the coffee shop, and went so far to insist that Sora stand with her in line so that she could continue talking. To Sora's relief, girl talk turned out to be two hours of Mimi updating her on everything that had happened in Odaiba and Shibuya in the eight or nine years that Sora had been in Korea.

Taichi worked up the courage to ask Mimi out in their last year of high school, and they'd been inseparable since. Mimi had moved in with him a year previously, after he'd shyly handed her a key and asked her if she minded. He'd asked her to marry her six months ago, taking her to her favorite restaurant and hiding the ring in her favorite dessert. Mimi's eyes had sparkled and she giggled uncontrollably as she told Sora about how she had almost decided to try another dessert, and she'd clutched at her stomach as she told her about how Taichi's eyes had bugged out and he'd almost stabbed himself with his own knife.

Sora reached forward. "Let me see the ring."

Mimi placed her hand in Sora's, her fingers extended elegantly, and Sora exclaimed over the enormous diamond solitaire set in a band of pure yellow gold, because it really was pretty. Mimi was shy as she pulled her hand away and smiled at Sora.

"We weren't sure that you'd be happy," she confided, finishing her tiny cup of espresso.

Sora quirked her eyebrows and looked at Mimi over the rim of her mug. "Why?"

"Well…you know how hung up he was on you before you left." Mimi blushed. "And I thought that maybe after nine years away from him, you'd developed feelings for him or…"

Sora tipped her head back and laughed harder than she had in a while, and apologized immediately after she was done. "I don't want you to feel stupid. But honestly, Mimi, I had mud fights with him and we played soccer together and he is never going to be anything more than a friend. Really."

"You won't have an affair with him?" Mimi grinned at Sora, and Sora threw the remnants of her scone at her best friend.

"I don't even want to think about sex with Taichi," she replied, laughing.

"What about Yamato?" Mimi asked, widening her brown eyes.

"Mimi…"

"I'm serious," her friend insisted, and Sora groaned mentally as Mimi leaned forward earnestly.

"He's nice when you get to know him."

"He's so standoffish that I'm not compelled to do so."

"You were pretty standoffish, too, you know."

"What? How?" Sora finished her cappuccino and put the mug down, licking her lips.

"You ran into the kitchen and asked me if I needed help when he was trying to have a conversation with you. Not exactly the best first impression."

"That wasn't my first impression," Sora replied, fluttering her hand in the air and tugging the bill of her hat lower on her face.

"You've met him before?" Mimi nudged Sora under the table. "How could you not tell me?"

"It wasn't really meeting," Sora replied irritably, ripping open a packet of sugar and pouring the white crystals onto the table. She arranged the granules into four long, thin rows with the side of her fork. "He ran into me on the street. I spilled my coffee and my papers."

"He helped you pick them up," Mimi said decidedly. "He always helps the people he runs into."

"Thoughtful of him," Sora said sarcastically. "Or…he could watch where he's going."

"He's been distracted lately," Mimi said softly. "His mom died two months ago."

Sora put her fork down. "Oh."

"You're a bitch today."

"I'm tired, I told you," Sora said.

"You're not telling me the whole story, Sora," Mimi said shrewdly, and Sora cursed her for being her best friend for being able to read her after six years apart without enough communication to matter.

Mimi was looking at her huge, soulful brown eyes, her pretty, honey-brown hair spilling over her shoulders, twirled into long, loose curls just as it had been when they were in middle school and the first year of high school, when they'd been together.

Sora, sadly, wasn't sure if they were still best friends. Their earlier friendship had been, at least from Sora's side, a peculiar sort of competition. Mimi could get any boy that she wanted by flipping her hair over her shoulder and pinning him with a disarmingly sweet gaze and smile, and Sora compensated by getting the best grades, having good relations with all the teachers, and working relentlessly. Mimi did her best to find dates for Sora, and Sora helped Mimi with her work.

There wasn't any competition, schoolwork, or social life between them now. Mimi was engaged and a model, so grades hadn't mattered for her, in the end, anyhow. In any case, Sora suspected that Mimi had never thought of Sora as competition, just as a good friend who had neurotic, perfectionist tendencies. Sora felt petty and small-minded when she thought back on the time she has spent with Mimi when they were teenagers. Grades had mattered for her, because it was only the people at the top of the class that got the good internships and learning opportunities with the famous, beautiful people of Korea.

Shin had worked with a famous production company, learning from three or four famous directors who he would tell Sora about every night with a child-like sort of enthusiasm. Sora had interned with a famous designer for two years before gambling and deciding to work on her own, under the designer's label. After a year, she'd hit gold, and after two, she was well established enough to move out on her own. One of Sora's friends in Korea, an inordinately pretty and sweet girl named Sunday, had interned with Sora but decided six months into the internship that design wasn't for her. She'd gone into acting and already had three hit roles under her belt. Sora hadn't spoken to her since the day that Sunday had told her that she was quitting.

Sora didn't know where she stood with Mimi without this element of competition between them. Mimi seemed to look at everyone with same sort of wide-eyed adoration, because Sora suspected that Mimi had never really grown up.

Sora wasn't sure if she warranted that sort of adoration.

"I think if you tried," Mimi said softly, switching tacks, "you'll like Yamato." She tapped her manicured fingernails against the table. "I know! You could use him in one of your runway shows. You told you had one coming up, and don't even try to tell me that he's not fit to be a model. I mean, come on, Sora, look at that body."

Sora laughed.

"His manager's always bugging him to do promotional stuff, anyhow…it would be a stretch to ask you to put his whole band in your show, but you can definitely put him in. You'd get publicity, too!" Mimi reached forward and clasped Sora's hand in hers. "You're listening, right? Stop looking at the sugar like it's cocaine."

Sora shook her hand free from Mimi's grasp and swept the sugar off the table and into her empty cup. "Tell his manager to call my secretary, and we'll work something out."

"Thank you! It wouldn't be any fun if we had both of you over for dinner if you two didn't get along," Mimi said sagely, giggling when Sora leveled her with a look. "I'm kidding, Sora-chan, I'm not that vapid."

Sora sighed and shook her head, and wondered how she'd ever thought that Seoul was better than Tokyo.

**A/N: Second chapter! I think I'm doing pretty well. :) And considering that I'm supposed to be writing a 20-page research paper for my history class right now…let's just say that I'm getting sidetracked. XD**

**So…I know that it's getting really AU-ish, even more so than my other story. I'm going for a completely different concept, trying to make Sora and Yamato and all the others more mature. Obviously, they need some sort of life experience to get that maturity, though. So… :D The Korean arts school is based on the one in _Goong_, which is…you guessed it: a Korean drama. It's a good enough of a concept, don't you think? I can make it work with the whole story, I think. **

**New character (kind of)! More background! I'm thinking of switching the point of view each chapter, so…next chapter will be Yamato again. I don't think I write anyone as well as I write Sora, though, so the POV switches aren't a promise. **

**Feedback is always nice, and you guys know that I respond to comments. :D So…tell me how it is!**


	3. Chapter 3

I own nothing.

**Burnt Sienna: Three**

Her offices and workplace were just as he'd expected them to be: clean, simple, with demure white walls and honey-brown hardwood flooring. The couches arranged in the waiting room were white crossed with thin stripes of pale yellow and orange, and they were comfortable. Large windows allowed plenty of sunlight in, and the atmosphere was comfortable and homey, not edgy and displacing as most of the other fashion designers he'd worked with tended to be.

"She's not picking up her phone," the receptionist whispered urgently, looking at Yamato nervously. Her name was Yuki, her nose was a bit too long, her eyes were a bit too big, and her hands fluttered nervously when she spoke.

"It's fine. I'm early," Yamato managed, fiddling with the heavy silver ring on his middle finger and tapping his feet.

"You seem nervous," Yuki said, and Yamato was tempted to laugh.

"I'm fine," he said instead.

In the distance, a door swung open and slammed shut, and muted footsteps sounded down the hall until the main office door lurched open and Sora stepped through, looking thoroughly windswept and exhausted. She wearing a short black peacoat that was belted snugly at her waist, the worn black strap of a messenger bag crossed from her left shoulder to her right hip, and Yamato was strangely comforted that she didn't carry a purse, though he didn't know why.

"Hi," she said, breathing heavily. Her cheeks were bright red, and he assumed that was either very cold outside, or she had run from wherever she had been to back here.

"Sorry I'm late," she continued. "It's freezing outside. It's probably going to start snowing soon."

Yamato looked out one of the large windows and saw that the sky was darkening ominously and, looking down, that strong gusts of wind were toying with peoples' scarves and bags.

"It's fine," he replied automatically. "I'm early."

She raised a slender eyebrow and offered him a half-smile. "I'll go back and get everything together, and then I'll get you," she said, pulling her bag over her head and dropping it on the floor to unbutton her coat.

"Okay," he replied, and she nodded, bowing shortly and hesitantly and then disappearing through another door that, presumably, led to the back of her offices. Yuki looked at him again, bobbing her head apologetically, and Yamato sighed and leaned back against the couch cushions, wishing he'd brought a book.

**X**

She called him back about fifteen minutes later, looking more relaxed and less like she wanted to throw herself into the nearest river. She actually looked very pretty, and he hated himself for noticing, especially since she had been so cold to him during their first official meeting. His ego, though not nearly as large as Taichi's or Daisuke's, was still there and very susceptible to bruising.

Her hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, with her bangs pinned back securely, and he could see a small but defined widow's peak curving at the center of her hairline. She was wearing a short-sleeved hooded T-shirt and a pair of track pants that sat low on her hips and folded loosely around her legs. Her arms were crossed over her stomach and a pair of slim black wire-framed glasses sat on the bridge of her nose.

"Do you do small talk, or is it okay if we get started?" she asked.

"Are you this abrupt with everyone, or am I lucky enough to receive special treatment?" he replied coolly. He was surprised when she laughed softly and half-smiled.

"I'm being rude, I know. Sorry." She bowed, and when she looked up, made eye contact with him, stepping forward and around him, sizing him up. Yamato felt like a piece of meat in a butcher shop.

"How tall are you?" she asked, toying with the ends of her ponytail.

"I think I'm 190 centimeters," he replied. "I haven't measured in a while."

"That's fine," she replied, jotting it down on a clipboard that he hadn't noticed before. "Okay, I need to measure you," she said, meeting his gaze again. "You need to take your sweatshirt off, and possibly the shirt under that."

Yamato shrugged and complied mutely, pulling the sweatshirt over his head and tossing over a nearby folding chair, and raised an eyebrow. She tipped her head to the side, then shook her head.

"You're fine," she said, pressing her lips together.

He followed her through two rooms to a brightly lit studio with a raised circular platform in front of a tall, three-way mirror. She nodded at the platform, and he took his shoes off before stepping on it obediently,

She pulled a yellow measuring tape out of her pocket, pushed a pencil behind her ear, and looked up at him seriously. "Okay, I have rules that you need to follow so I'm not tempted to stick you with a needle next time we meet. For one, don't talk when I'm working. It's distracting, and I want to get through this as quickly as possible so I can leave at five. Second, don't move when I'm measuring you, because then the numbers will be off. If we finish with enough time, I'll start fitting you, but I doubt we'll get there today."

"What's at five?" he asked.

"I get off," she replied evenly.

"Do you always work with a model personally?"

"Only the ones Mimi begs me to work with, apparently," she replied, and there was wry and rueful twist to her half-smile. She straightened the measuring tape, told him to stand up straight, and began working.

He preferred not speaking to making awkward small talk, though he would never tell Sora that—his ego wouldn't allow it. He simply moved his arms and legs and shifted his weight when she told him to. There was a stony determination to her face as she worked, and Yamato could imagine her as a schoolgirl, completing her work with the same look on her face. The muscles in her arms shifted smoothly under her skin every so often, and her ponytail swished over her shoulders when she moved.

She was exceedingly thin and proportioned like a dancer, with long legs, delicate wrists, and slim, strong musculature. She carried herself with lithe grace that Yamato was sure that she didn't have when she was younger, because mild surprise would flicker over her face whenever she moved without tripping or knocking something over.

She also had a distinct sadness in her eyes that had made Mimi wonder when they were out. Taichi had said that he would be late coming home and Mimi hadn't wanted to walk to the corner market alone or bother Sora to walk with her. Yamato suspected that it was more of Mimi wanting to spend time alone with Yamato, which happened only occasionally now that they were out of school. Mimi had told him during the walk that Sora used to be far more vivacious and charismatic when they were younger, and that when she laughed, it was always out loud and with her head thrown back, and she used to yell and chase after Taichi and play soccer like her life depended on it. She had been pretty back then, and though lots of boys were interested in her, it wasn't likely at all that she would give them the time of day.

Yamato wondered vaguely what could have made her so much quieter, reserved, and melancholy.

She smelled the same as the day that he'd run into her on the street, though the musty, summery scent of rain was less distinct than the extraordinarily feminine scent of rose petals.

She stood up abruptly and tugged on one of his belt loops, smiling slightly. "You can put your shirt back on, if you're cold. I'm done."

"What time is it?" he asked.

She walked over to her laptop and leaned in to check the screen. "Four forty-five," she said.

"Do you have anything to do after five?"

She shifted her weight to her right leg and raised her eyebrows. "Why?"

"We could go get—"

She laughed and shook her head before he could finish. "Sorry. Mimi asked me to work with you, that's all."

He was strangely compelled to convince her to go somewhere with him, for whatever reason. Maybe it was her perfume, maybe it was her hair, or maybe it was the fact that she was pretty, sad, and not giving him a second chance. Maybe it was his damaged ego trying to redeem itself.

"I'm doing this because of Mimi and Taichi," he said, and she shifted her weight again, looking only mildly interested.

He appreciated her genuine detachment.

"You're good friends with Mimi and Taichi," he said patiently and rationally. "I'm a good friend of Taichi and Mimi. We're probably going to see a lot of each other, and it would be awkward if we didn't get along."

"We could always ignore each other," she suggested, and rolled her eyes and sighed when he looked at her plaintively. Yamato marveled at how well she played a bitch.

"I hate you," she muttered, then amending, "for being practical." She paused, sizing him up, and her shoulders slumped minutely; Yamato knew she would give in.

"Let me get my coat," she said. Her gaze sharpened into a glare. "You're paying."

He laughed, and she stalked off, muttering in Korean.

**X**

"It's cold," she muttered as they walked against the wind.

Yamato looked at her passively. "We could have taken the subway."

She shook her head stubbornly, and he could see that the tips of her ears were bright red. Her cheeks and nose were the same color, and her eyes were watering.

"I told you I didn't want to waste money," Sora grumbled. She took her hands out of her pockets and hugged herself, balling them against her sides. She looked up and met his eyes, and her burgundy eyes widened as she let loose a loud, single shout of laughter. "Your hair!" she said, giggling. She blinked her eyes deliberately, and a lone stream of tears trailed down her cheek.

"Let's just go inside somewhere," Yamato grumbled, his hands going to his hair in an attempt to assess the damage.

"Fine," she agreed, her eyes gleaming with mirth, and she veered off to the left, cutting him off and forcing him to follow her into a music shop.

"Awesome," she breathed as she took her gloves off and rubbed her hands together.

Yamato watched her as he unbuttoned his coat and sifted his fingers through his hair, trying to get it to lie flat without looking too flat.

He hadn't pegged her for a music lover, simply because she didn't look like one. She didn't carry her MP3 player with her (at least, not that he could tell), and though she had known about his band, it didn't mean much, especially since they were, as Sora had said herself, "right on the brink of popularity."

Yamato watched as Sora made a beeline for the back, wondering how she knew where all the good music was when she had obviously never been here.

The atmosphere was pleasant; the walls were painted black with smatterings of white, CDs were stacked in tottering piles, gleaming black racks stretched all the way back through the fairly small store, and cardboard boxes were lined against the walls, open and overflowing. There was other merchandise tacked to the walls and kept safe in scratched glass cases, along with imports, bootlegs, and the mother lode of music-no-one-knows-they-don't-know-about.

Yamato knew the owner of the shop, though not very well, and he'd spent hours after school or on weekends (and whenever he wasn't in cram school, which his father insisted he attend). He knew the store like the back of his hand for about a week before new shipments of CDs and merchandise came in, and then he would start over.

He hadn't been back in over a year, after his career and his band's career started kicking up and they began making plans and signing contracts to record their first single. Still, he managed to track through everything and find Sora in the back.

She was sitting on the floor, going the CDs in the rather vast Korean section.

"They came out with a new single," she said mournfully, looking up at him when he stopped beside her.

"How'd you know where to look?" he asked, squatting beside her and falling back gently to sit.

"My grandfather's friend's son's cousin owns the place," she said absentmindedly, trailing her fingers over stacks of CDs and pulling fifteen or twenty off the rack.

"What?"

"My grand—I'm kidding," she said, grinning. "Did you know that Clazziquai came out with a new CD?" She waved the case in his face, and Yamato raised an eyebrow.

She sighed when she caught his expression. "I used to come here and get stuff the day before it officially came out. L'Arc-en-Ciel, Miyavi, Due le Quartz when they were still together, you name it. It was cheaper and I didn't have to deal with screaming fangirls. I'd find new band here too, which was always nice."

"Oh." Yamato picked up one of the CDs she had discarded and looked at the front. "TVXQ?" he asked, flipping the case over and looking at the back.

"You haven't heard of them?" Sora asked, pulling her knees up to her chest and pushing herself forward into a crouch. "They're hug everywhere in Asia right now."

Yamato shook his head, and she laughed again. It was open, genuine, and lively, just as Mimi had promised.

"You're a music snob, aren't you," she teased genially, waving her finger in his face.

Yamato blinked, startled.

She sighed, slowly unfolded, and stood up, stooping momentarily to collect a small stack of CDs. "You're still paying, right?" she laughed again, and shook her head reassuringly. "I'm kidding."

"No," Yamato said, standing up and digging around in his back pocket for his wallet.

"You don't," she said.

"I dragged you out in the cold," Yamato said matter-of-factly, smiling slightly and pulling bills out of his wallet.

"Yamato-kun…" she said, pushing at his hands.

Yamato was surprised that she addressed him so familiarly after spending so little time with him, but he didn't mind. She had been cool, formal, and a bit sarcastic earlier, bordering on rude, but she had kept the pretense up well. He preferred familiarity to forced formality.

"I'm paying," he replied firmly.

She followed him to the register, mutely setting her CDs on the counter and widening her eyes when she saw the total.

"Who's paying?" the cashier asked, bagging the items and looking between the two of them.

Yamato set his money on the counter and Sora sighed.

"I'll be back," she said. "Can you wait outside? It'll only take a second."

She disappeared before Yamato could object.

**X**

His apartment was cold when he managed to get the key into the lock and push the door, which was heavier than he remembered, open. He adjusted the temperature on the thermostat, took the black plastic bag to the kitchen with him, and set it on the counter as he took a can of beer out of the refrigerator. He lit a cigarette while he opened the can, and, puffing on the fag and watching the smoke rise slowly, walked to the living room, sitting on an armchair. He grabbed a remote, turned the TV on, and as the light from the screen flickered on the carpet and cast strange shadows around the dim room, he opened the plastic bag and emptied its contents onto his lap.

Sor hadn't lied when she said that she would only take a second; she had emerged barely five minutes later with her own bag. Yamato had walked her back to her office; by that time it was almost six o'clock and getting dark.

He had walked her to the elevator door and handed her the bag of her CDs, and she had handed him the bag she had come out of the shop with.

"Promise you won't open it until you get home, all right?" she had said, holding out her pinky. He had nodded and promised, taking the bag but not linking pinkies with her, and she'd smiled before stepping on the elevator and waving as the doors swished shut.

There was a CD, a small plastic case, and a folded piece of paper in his lap. He unfolded the paper, which was covered in small, neat, bubbly kanji and read.

_Yamato-kun,_

_Thank you for the CDs, though you really didn't have to pay for them. I would've gotten them at some point. Anyhow, to thank you, I got you two things. I know you'll like the first one, though I'm not sure about the second one. (TT) We can't have everything, can we?_

_The first thing is an imitation of the earrings Hyde was wearing at his last solo concert; you said in one of your interviews that he was our musical inspiration when you were high school, so I thought you might like them. Second is The TRAX's first album; they're a Korean rock band. They're not as popular back in the motherland, but I don't know how much you like pop music and I didn't want to take a chance. I put the Japanese translations for the Korean tracklistings on the back of this page. _

_Also: let's get to know each other, okay? Your idea was reasonable and I was just a bitch. My phone number is at the bottom; so if you ever want to do something sometime, please call me. _

_Sora_

Yamato re-read the letter twice, looked at the CD and earrings in his lap, and inhaled thoughtfully, watching the tip of the cigarette glow red and slowly fade to grey, as the ashes grew long.

How strange.

**X**

"Yeah, she was pretty moody," Taichi said as he ran on the treadmill. His shirt was damp and his face was slick with sweat, and his breathing was labored. "But that letter sounds like something she would do," he added, pushing a couple of buttons and lowering the speed of the track. "She hates apologizing or doing nice thins for people in person. Says it's embarrassing."

Yamato grunted noncommittally, leaning against a wall.

"It's classic Sora," Taichi concluded, stepping off and walking around in slow circles with his hands on his hips. He wiped his face with a towel and looked at Yamato. "She means it."

"I figured," Yamato replied, following Taichi down the stairs and into the locker room.

"You should call her," Taichi said, pulling his shirt over his head and opening a locker. Yamato sat down on the bench with his back to Taichi and replied.

"I should."

"Go watch a movie. Go to that music shop again. How did she not strike you as a music freak? She listens to everything she can get her hands on, and then some. Korean, Chinese, French, Spanish. There's even some Indian and German in there. She's got an 80 gig iPod and she running out of space on that, and she's filled up three or four external hard drives with music files."

Yamato shrugged.

"You've only met her twice," Taichi said. Yamato heard the locker click shut, and he stood up, waiting for Taichi to walk to the door.

"Don't judge her."

Yamato planned to take that to heart.

"But," Taichi added hesitantly, after a short silence, "if you hurt her in any way, our nine years of friendship will do nothing to stop me from kicking your sorry ass. She's damaged in the worst way possible."

Yamato looked at him expectantly. "How?"

Taichi shook his head. "Get it out of her, man. I'm not telling you anything."

**A/N: I however, will tell you. In the next chapter, that is. :) **

**Thank you to all my lovely reviewers! I'm glad you're all liking this story.**

**As always, tell me what you think. :D**


	4. Chapter 4

I own nothing.

**Burnt Sienna: Four**

Sora squatted in front of a cardboard box, squinting at the label, which was scrawled with black permanent marker in messy, bubbly Hangul.

_It figures_, Sora thought wryly, standing up and putting her fists on her hips, cocking her head to the side. _The box that I really need is at the bottom of the stack_.

She'd been in Japan for over a week now, and her only motivation for unpacking was the fact that she was running out of clothes. She had been living out of the two suitcases she had packed for the plane ride, and she was in no mood to do laundry. Shin had always been the one to do that. The one time he had tired to teach her, she had put detergent where the fabric softener belonged, and somehow, in the end they were covered in suds and the clothes hadn't been cleaned.

Sora sighed and reached up for the box crowning the stack, grunting and pulling it down, resting it on her head and slowly lowering it to the floor. Five minutes later, she had the box she needed open, and clothes were heaped on the floor as she rummaged through, looking for what she needed.

She came up with a bra that looked like it might be too big, underwear that she didn't ever remember wearing, a pair of jeans that she liked, and an old shirt of Shin's: a thick, fleecy dark blue hoodie.

Sora sighed. She didn't have a shirt to wear underneath it, but the sweatshirt smelled comfortingly of spicy cologne mixed with a whiff of soju and a bit of cigarette smoke. She buried her face in the soft cotton and inhaled deeply, sighing again when the zipper scratched her cheek.

She hated unpacking.

**X**

Shin had worn that sweatshirt on their first date, because, as he explained as they stood under the awning of an outdoor café, watching rain pour from the sky, it had looked like rain when he had left his house that morning, and he wanted to have something to cover her with. Sora could remember smiling and slipping her hand in his, and him grinning as water dripped from his shaggy hair and down the straight line of his nose.

He was sweet, shy, and outrageously flirtatious, all at the same time, and for the week after the incident in her apartment (her last week in Korea without a boyfriend and a horde of jealous girls watching and threatening her), Sora blushed more than she ever had in her lifetime. He sat behind her in class, and so he passed her notes complimenting everything from her handwriting to her socks, pulled on her hair, and smiled sweetly when she turned around to glare at him. Her easygoing best friend and seat partner, JiEun, laughed and told him off when the teacher wasn't looking, though they all knew that she was joking and both Sora and Shin were ridiculously infatuated with each other.

He finally asked her out while following her through the halls as she tried to find JiEun on a Friday afternoon. She'd been absentmindedly replying to his teasing when he grabbed her wrist and asked her if she was free on Saturday, because the amusement park was open, and if she didn't want to go there, there were plenty of restaurants that he could think of taking her to. She hadn't been paying attention the first time he asked her, and when he called her name with a loud "Yah!" she had snapped back to reality and his expectant grin, and looked at him wide eyes. He had brushed her bangs off her face, squeezed her hand in his, and asked her again, and she had nodded wordlessly as the people milling around them began to stop and whisper curiously. He had smiled, adjusted the strap of his messenger bag, and told her that he would pick her up at eleven, saying with a sly smile that he already knew where she lived.

If the girls around them hadn't been seething with anger and jealousy before, they were at that moment, and Shin had merely laughed, pulled a beanie over his hair, and asked her if she was coming, because JiEun had said to meet her at the front doors. She had nodded numbly and followed him, and somewhere along the short walk, he took her hand in his, lacing his fingers with hers, and smiled at her reassuringly.

He was waiting in the lobby of her apartment building at exactly eleven o'clock, wearing long, comfortably loose jeans whose frayed hems covered battered Converse, and the blue sweatshirt over a simple white T-shirt. His hands had been pushed into his pockets, his posture slightly slouched, and Sora had to pinch herself to keep from staring so obviously, because that had been her first time seeing him in something other than the school uniform, and he looked _good_. She had never realized that his hair was so black and longish and silky, or noticed the way his shaggy bangs fell into his somber eyes. She had never realized that his skin was so smooth and pale or that his lips were so soft and kissable, and she didn't know how she had missed the confidence and quiet power in his seemingly neutral stance. At school, he had always been smiling and laughing and joking, but here he was quiet and intense.

His face had changed the minute she stepped closer, however. His eyes lit up, his lips spread into a sweet grin, and his cheeks dimpled, and she didn't see that serious, brooding expression of his for the rest of the date.

Instead of taking her to the amusement park or one of the many restaurants, Shin took her all around Seoul, dragging her around with city with child-like enthusiasm, laughing and buying her mounds of food from street-side stalls, insisting that there was no way she would get sick from the food or from eating too much, because he had seen her and JiEun after school at the café, pigging out on ice cream and coffee and ramen noodles. Sora had laughed and followed him around as he bounded from place to place, holding her hand the whole time as they alternately walked and ran.

He took her to the bar that he and his friends went to over the weekends, yelling cheerfully to the bartender and introducing Sora to the room, grinning widely. He took her to the convenience store close to his house, introducing the owner as the nice woman that sold his cigarettes for cheaper and gave him bandages for free when he got into fights. The elderly woman had smiled at her and told her that "Shinnie" was a sweet kid that needed some guidance, and Sora had laughed as Shin blushed a bit and coughed while shuffling his feet. The shop owner told her to visit sometime and they would talk more about Shin, and he had yelped and hurriedly dragged her out of the shop as Sora waved goodbye.

He kissed for the first time on that date, and Sora was surprised—but not, not really—that she had let him. Of the three previous boys that she had agreed to see past the first date, she hadn't allowed two to hold her hand until the second date, and only one had kissed her (on the fifth date, no less). Shin, on the other hand, had simply been walking down the street, swinging their clasped hands back and forth when he stopped abruptly and asked her if she wanted to know how much he liked her.

It had started drizzling around that moment, and Sora had been in Korea long enough to know that at any second, the sky would open up and soak them to the bone. He had kept her hand in his and looked at her with warm brown eyes as water droplets beaded on his long eyelashes and his cheeks dimpled softly as a small smile played on his full lips. She had nodded wordlessly as the rain began to fall harder and faster, and her hair began to stick to her neck and her shirt began to soak through and cling to her skin.

He had smiled fully, cupping her cheek in his hand and brushing her wet bangs from her eyes, and he had kissed her softly, keeping his lips on hers for a few seconds before pulling away, draping his slightly damp sweatshirt over her shoulders, and pulling her under the awning of the nearby café and grinning again.

He refused to take his sweatshirt back later, citing the fact that he was wearing long sleeves and wouldn't be cold, while she was wearing a white, short-sleeved T-shirt (with a purple bra underneath, he noted with a slightly lecherous grin).

After her first encounter with him (the time that he walked her from school to her apartment), she had expected him to be stereotypically dark and sexy, yet he was also cute, playful, and enthusiastic, laughing readily at jokes and coming up with different, ridiculous games to play with his and her friends. She felt like a mother sometimes, watching him play, but most of the time he made her either laugh or shiver.

The second time he seriously kissed her had been around a week later at one in the morning, outside a pounding, teeming club in a not-so-reputable district of Seoul. He had been half-drunk and very lucid and she had been completely inebriated and incoherent. She was an angry drunk, and she had yelled something at him, and he had glared and left her at the bar, walking out the door with his hands in his pockets. She had followed him outside, stumbling and tripping, and she had yelled his name, following him into a dark alley, and he had lifted her up by her elbows, pushed her back against the rough brick wall, and kissed her, hard.

She woke up the next morning in his bed, wearing soft, clean clothing that obviously wasn't hers, and after she finished fielding a frantic call from her mother, he walked into the room with two cups of coffee, looking sleepy and rumpled. The soft kiss that he pressed to her cheek somehow turned into another round of rough, sweaty sex, and as he rolled off of her and pulled the covers over their close, trembling forms, he asked her to be his girlfriend.

She said yes, of course.

**X**

Sora found herself sitting across from Yamato on the subway; she was going shopping, and he told her he had another meeting with his manager in a (seemingly characteristic) quiet, mellow tones. His voice was a low, soothing, chocolate-swirled baritone that seemed to wrap around her and pull her into something quite like serenity, and Sora appreciated this, though she would rather talk to him in the comfort of Mimi's apartment or in a restaurant, rather than on the subway, surrounded by lecherous, middle-aged businessmen and uppity housewives.

He got off at the same stop as her, followed up her up the stairs, and turned in the same direction that she did, and she was about to tell him to stop stalking her when he laughed out loud.

"I'm not following you," Yamato said calmly. His hands were in his pockets and his shoulders slouched. Sora shrugged and adjusted the strap of her bag, momentarily wondering why she had bothered bringing a purse with her this time when she normally just stuffed money into her pockets and hoped it was enough.

"I didn't think you were," she said, allowing herself a small smile.

"It's just…" he trailed off.

"Shibuya is a good place to shop and have an office, I know," Sora replied. "My offices are here, too, remember?"

He nodded wordlessly, and Sora found it funny that his hair didn't move, even as his head bobbed and the wind rustled through the streets, carding through her hair and ruffling her bangs.

"I'll see you later, then," Sora said, fingering a zipper on her purse and shifting her feet. "I don't want to make you late for your meeting."

"Do you want to meet up later?" he asked quietly, and Sora looked up, surprised.

"That's fine. What time?"

He gave her a time and she scribbled it on her palm with a pen that she found at the bottom of her bag. He smiled slightly and she waited for him to walk away before turning and heading toward the nearest café.

She was surprised when he called half an hour later to tell her that he was finished with whatever business he had. She told him to come to the store she was in, and he walked in five minutes later with a paper coffee cup and a somber look on his handsome face.

"Hi," Sora offered, mildly surprised.

He nodded to acknowledge her, and Sora looked down at the pair of jeans in her hand, running her fingers over the stitching and rivets and the rough creases of the pockets.

"Do you want to do something?"

"Don't rush," he replied, finishing whatever had been in cup and throwing it into a trashcan by the cashier's station. "I don't have anything else to do today."

"I'm your amusement?"

"Yes." He quirked an eyebrow and lifted the right corner of his mouth. Sora wondered if he ever fully smiled, with his heart beating and bleeding in his lips and his teeth gleaming through the red.

"Taichi said you were damaged," he said abruptly, and Sora could honestly say that it was the most effective damper to throw on a conversation possible.

"Taichi's a douchebag," she muttered, throwing the jeans back onto the shelf and picking up another pair, a darker one with bleach spots splattered across the legs.

"He wouldn't say why," Yamato continued.

"Good."

"Takenouchi Sora, why are you damaged?"

Sora balled the pair of jeans up and threw it back onto the shelf, gathered her purse and coat, and stalked out of the shop, muttering an apology to the salesclerk as she passed. She could hear him following after her, his footsteps long and light on the concrete.

"Stop following me."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Are you always this inconsiderate?"

He was silent.

"You didn't answer my question," Sora said, mimicking his previous response in a high, irritated voice. He remained silent, and she scoffed. "That's what I thought."

"Takenouchi, wait!"

So they were back to surnames. Sora hiked her purse up on her shoulder and zipped her puffy winter coat up to her chin, pushing her hands into her pockets, and turning around. "I'll see you around, maybe, Ishida."

"Come off it, Takenouchi Sora. There's nothing in this world that—"

"Why do you sleep?"

"Eh?"

"Why do you sleep?" Sora repeated irritably, brushing her hair from her face and looking at him fiercely.

"I wasn't good at science, at least biology," he said, scratching his head. "Something to do with synapses, right?"

"No," she replied. "I don't mean physically or biologically or neurologically. Simply. Why do we sleep? Why do we need sleep?"

"To rest," he replied, drawing his pale blond eyebrows together. "At least, I do."

"I sleep to dream," Sora said quietly, tugging her fingers through her hair and crossing her arms.

"What does this have to do with…?"

"Ishida, why do people dream?"

"REM cycle?"

"I'm not interested in the science behind it, and you're not—fuck it, I'm going." Sora turned on her heel and stepped forward once before his hand landed on her shoulder, effectively grounding her. She shrugged him off.

"To remember," he said quietly, grabbing her wrist in her hand and keeping her there. "Dreams are better than reality, aren't they?"

Sora shook herself free once more and looked at him, hoping for something that would tell her that he was really only guessing and that he had no idea what he was talking about. She hadn't been looking for someone to relate to; she had been hoping that he would be confused and leave her alone.

"My mother died two months ago," he said.

Sora nodded, not exactly sure how to react.

"What about you? Why do you run to dreamscapes?"

Sora had read his lyrics once, when she was still in Korea. She'd been going to the hospital regularly by then, and the ride there, whether by taxi or subway, was long and boring. She bought magazines from a newsstand owned by a middle-aged Japanese man from Osaka, and though her Japanese had deteriorated to the point that she couldn't understand his heavily accented speech, they had long conversations and he sold her his old Japanese magazines. She remembered reading an interview one of the magazines had conducted with Bible Kiss Bible, with Yamato reciting some lyrics and explaining the deeper meaning. She couldn't remember that contrived deeper meaning, but she did remember the lyrics and the fact that they had been as raw as she had felt at that time. Two months ago, roughly.

Sora unzipped her coat and ran her fingers around her neck, clutching at the thin silver chain that was hidden away under her shirt, and pulling it out. A white-gold ring, set with a multi-faceted diamond, hung from the chain, catching the light and glimmering almost ethereally as it swayed in the cold winter wind, and Sora smiled sadly as Yamato squinted at it and reached forward to touch it. She snatched it away before he could and looked up at him, hoping her eyes were opened as wide as they felt or that the tip her nose wasn't turning red, like it did when she was on the verge of some extreme emotion.

"I was married," she said hesitantly, breaking eye contact and looking at the ring cupped in her palm, then at the ground.

He was quiet, and Sora took it as her cue to continue.

"I was married for five years, in Korea."

"To who?"

"I told you about Lee Shin, didn't I?"

"You walked away right after you did, yes."

"Him." Sora tucked the chain away underneath her shirt.

"What happened to him? He's not here in Shibuya with you, is he?" Yamato looked nonchalant as he pushed his hands into his pockets. Sora would normally say that she appreciated nonchalance, but not to the point where it robbed a person of his or her personality, the way it did with Yamato.

Sora sighed and zipped her coat again.

"He died, a month ago."

**A/N: Is this a legitimate cliffhanger? Is this even a cliffhanger? ToT Iunno. **

**So! How do you like it? Does it seem like it has a plot? Main characters? Am I dwelling far too much on the past? Should I stick some Sorato action in? Do you guys like the characterization? Writing?**

**I should probably shoot myself or something violent and life-ending like that. I'm supposed to be studying for finals. Calculus is going to fuck me over completely. But alas, I had to write; that story-bug thing kept biting me. **

**Thank you to all the people that I couldn't reply to with nifty review reply thing. :)**

**And…tell me what you think. :D**


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